Missiles for ground flights: Musk won’t stop

Elon Musk continues to prepare humans for interplanetary flights. Recently he announced SpaceX is to create a new ultra-heavy missile Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) during the next five years. It will be used for...

It is planned, the launch of this missile will be much cheaper than a launch of the analogue from today’s company fleet. This fact together with its incredible carrying capacity (150 tonnes of payload) will allow, according to Musk, to use the carrier for a mass launch of commercial satellites.

The entrepreneur did not stop at the point that is cool but not incredible ambitious. He suggested to use BFR missile for intercontinental flights. That means any point on the Earth can be reached in less than one hour.

Space tourism is an entertainment for billionaires so far, but BFR will be able to make such flights available for people of ordinary income.

In particular, Musk insists that the decrease in costs will be caused by the possibility of new missiles implementation into an existing SpaceX infrastructure.

Musk has only announced the project, but there is already a number of questions.

The first thing that comes to mind is the security issue. The statistic of successfully landed satellites developed by SpaceX is not enough. Not every person will take on the risk of usage even the fastest vehicle if he is not sure if he will stay alive.

It is also not clear how ordinary passengers will handle overloads during take-off and landing. Spacemen are subject to strict selective procedures and multi-year trainings before they are allowed to space flight.

Moreover we have to take into account the large air travel network covering almost the entire world. And we should not underestimate the difficulties of development a new travel network which will significantly cross the existing one.

A development of a joint infrastructure for controlling the launch of both air planes and missiles. But it might require the construction of launching platforms close to the airports. But SpaceX launches its reusable carriers from offshore platforms.

People living not far away from airports are struggling from the noise airplanes make. And now try to imagine the noise of launching missiles.

It will be also an issue to quickly transport people to offshore platforms.

The affordability of such flight will make them very popular and that will create a new global transport network. And it is likely to create a bigger air pollution cannot be compensated even if the whole world will use electric cars.

But that all will hardly stop Elon Musk and make his turn back. Most probably he will seek for solutions for every single issue and systematically implement them.

It is possible the passenger traffic will not implemented exactly this way. But if there is an opportunity to get something faster, easier and cheaper, it won’t be forgotten. So most probably the new idea of Musk will seriously influence the development of transportation in the near future.